by K. J. Emrick
“Where were you earlier today?” It wasn’t the first time that he’d asked that question, but Grayson had dodged it each time. Cookie was getting tired of the games. If this little weasel-faced man had killed her friend Sheila, she wanted to know. She wanted to know right now.
When Grayson shrugged, Jerry repeated the question one more time. Cookie could hear everything over the speaker out here in the hall.
“I said, where were you today?”
“I’ve been at home,” was the answer that finally came. Grayson’s voice was high-pitched and squeaky, like he’d never quite gotten over puberty. “There was a Planet of the Apes marathon on HBO, and I just love Roddy McDowall. The old movies are much better than the remakes, don’t you think?”
Jerry didn’t answer. He wasn’t the one being interrogated.
“Right,” Grayson said nervously. “Anyway, it started at noon. I was there watching it until eight o’clock when I went to meet the guys at the bar for our game.”
“By home,” Jerry asked him, “you mean your girlfriend’s house? Amanda Tucker’s place?”
“Sure. That’s where I’m living now.”
“So where was she? Because, you see, when we asked her about you she didn’t have the faintest idea where you were.”
Grayson made a helpless motion with his hand. “How should I know? I don’t keep her on a leash. She was out. She didn’t get back before I left for the game.”
Jerry pursed his lips, but he wrote that down in the notepad in front of him on the desk. “A movie marathon on HBO, huh? Didn’t realize anyone still watched HBO. So. Can someone confirm this story? I mean, since your girlfriend can’t give you an alibi, can someone else?”
“What business is that of yours?” Grayson folded his arms over his chest, settling back in the uncomfortable plastic chair. “I have a life of my own. I didn’t kill nobody.”
Cookie gasped and put her hand up to the glass.
At the same time, Jerry leaned in and settled his elbows on the table between him and Grayson. “You didn’t kill who? What made you say that, Grayson?”
“I’m not stupid, Officer Stansted. Sheila Tucker flies off a balcony, and then you’re suddenly breaking up my poker game to chase me down and bring me here. You want me for this crime.” Now he leaned forward again, arms still crossed. “Only, I didn’t kill her. You can’t put this on me.”
“Now that’s very interesting,” Jerry said. “How did you know that Sheila died? I know news travels fast in a town like this but you told me you were at home all day. Then you went to a bar to have a card game. How exactly did you hear that it was Sheila who died?”
A little bit of Grayson’s confidence slipped away as his shoulders slumped. “Amanda called me to say. Her mother meant the world to her and now she’s dead.”
“But not enough to you,” Jerry pointed out, “to leave your card game?”
“She wasn’t my mother,” he mumbled.
Cookie bit the inside of her cheek to hold back a very unladylike comment as she thought that through. What Grayson was saying made sense. The police had already informed Amanda of this tragedy, and of course she would have called her boyfriend to tell him the news. If she’d been looking for sympathy, she was obviously with the wrong man.
There was still a big hole in his story. One that she could see Jerry was just about to close in on.
Inside the interview room, he tapped the end of his pen against the table. It made a hollow sort of pinging with each hit. “I have to tell you, Grayson. You don’t seem to be too torn up about this.”
The shrug he got in reply was full of indifference. “Why should I be upset? Like I said, I didn’t kill her.”
“The way I understand it, she didn’t like you. Now she’s dead, and you don’t have anyone to corroborate your alibi. Not to mention… your car was there at the retirement home. The surveillance cameras saw you going in, and they saw you going out.”
Grayson’s face went pale.
Jerry took a moment to twirl his pen around in the air. “So much for your alibi. Although, I have to say the bit about Roddy McDowall was a nice touch.”
Cookie watched as Grayson swallowed a few times and then shifted in his chair again. When he sat back up and unfolded his arms, his hands were shaking. “Okay, look. Look. I was there, okay? At the retirement home. I was there. But when I got inside, I heard everyone going crazy and then someone said that Sheila was dead so I just… I just ran.”
“Like you did with us at the bar,” Jerry pointed out.
“Yeah, like that.” Grayson laughed nervously. “Sure, I knew what you were at the bar for. I knew what was coming. So I ran. Can you blame me? Here you are accusing me of a murder I didn’t commit. You think I want to go to jail? Over Sheila Tucker?”
Jerry wrote all of that down before asking his next question. “Since you’re in such a talkative mood, why don’t you tell me why you went to the retirement home in the first place?”
“I, uh, I’d rather not say.”
Jerry shook his head. “That’s not an answer I can accept, Grayson. If you want me to believe you didn’t kill Sheila Tucker, then you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”
“Officer Stansted, we both know the law. I don’t have to say anything to you at all.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Jerry commented, nodding his head, “you’ve been through this all before, haven’t you?”
He flipped backward through the notepad to an earlier page. “Grayson DeBeers. Arrested four times for charges of assault, convicted twice. Arrested once for burglary, charges dismissed. Arrested three times for petty theft, convicted all three times. So you do know the system pretty well, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.” Grayson swallowed again. “I know my rights.”
“Okay. Then you also know what happens if you don’t talk to me.”
“You… you arrest me?”
“I arrest you,” Jerry agreed. “Then, I take you to a judge. Then, you go to jail. Now, if you want to take your chances on convincing twelve strangers that you didn’t kill Sheila Tucker, after everything we’ve talked about here, you go right ahead and keep silent. I have to tell you, I wouldn’t take those odds. But hey, you’re a gambling man. Maybe you can see an angle here that I’ve missed.”
He closed the notepad, and put the pen away into his uniform pocket. Then he stood up, taking his time about it, giving Grayson a chance to change his mind. When he just kept staring at the table and not saying anything, Jerry gave up and walked out. Grayson slumped forward with his head in his hands as soon as he was alone.
Jerry closed the door to the interview room and leaned his shoulder against the wall next to the one-way mirror. Cookie put her hands on the sides of his face. “You tried your best,” she told him. “If he doesn’t want to come right out and confess, you’ve still got enough to charge him, right?”
“Oh, sure. No problem there. It’s just…”
He trailed off without finishing, but Cookie knew exactly what he meant. “It’s just that you think this was way too easy.”
“Exactly!” He frowned as he shook his head. “I’ve been a police officer for more than thirty years now. In all that time, do you know how many criminals I’ve arrested because they let themselves get caught by a security camera?”
“No. How many?”
“None. Exactly none. Grayson would be the first.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Cookie agreed with him. “I want to see someone punished for Sheila’s murder just as much as anyone else, but I want it to be the right one.”
“And,” Jerry summed things up, “neither one of us believes that Grayson is the right one.”
“Exactly. I knew you were a smart man, Jerry Stansted.”
“That’s why I asked you to marry me, isn’t it?”
Cookie was tired, and maybe that was why she didn’t find the humor in those words. She’d been up since before dawn working at the bakery, and her go
od friend had been murdered today, and she was just too tired to wonder how long she would be his fiancé, instead of his wife.
He noticed the way she went quiet, and there was a subtle shift in his deep hazel eyes that she wasn’t sure she liked. “I need to talk to you, Cookie.”
“Oh, Jerry.” She sighed heavily, the exhaustion flooding through her. “Can it wait until tomorrow, please?”
Her answer surprised him. She could tell. He reached for her hand, and when he was holding it he drew in a breath to say something else.
That was when they heard the back door to the department bang open. Then a voice thundered through the halls.
“Where is he! I want Jerry Stansted in my office and I want him there now!”
Cookie knew that voice.
She cringed. That would be Chief Ed Rosen. After Rick Santimaw had been murdered last year the town had conducted open interviews for the position of police chief. Several people had applied, both from within the department and from outside.
Ed Rosen had been the town council’s pick. He hadn’t grown up here in Widow’s Rest but he had the experience that other candidates didn’t. He’d already been a lieutenant at a department up in the northern part of the state and whatever he’d said to the town council during his interview had won them over. He’d been offered the job, and now he ran the department.
Cookie didn’t like the way he ran things, but then again no one had asked her.
Jerry hadn’t applied for the job. He said he was just too old to take on that kind of responsibility now. Besides, he’d said, it would just be one more thing that delayed their wedding.
Yet here they were a year later, still unmarried.
Ed shouted again and Cookie knew he was headed this way next. She had no use for the town’s new police chief. Rick Santimaw had been a blowhard politician and an impossible man to reason with, but he had at least been a capable leader. He cared about his men. Ed was a different breed of cop. He was fond of saying there was only two ways of doing things in his department, the wrong way and his way.
She saw Jerry frown. He’d never much taken to Ed’s way of doing things, either.
He came right around the corner in a huff, his long-sleeved shirt buttoned tight at the cuffs and the neck, a tie clipped neatly in place down the front. Ed was all about appearances. His blonde hair was always neatly swept to the left each day and held in place with what Cookie suspected was a full can of hair spray. His narrow jaw was always clean shaven. He wore those gold clusters on his lapel to indicate he was the chief, as if the lapel pins that actually said “CHIEF” weren’t enough for anyone to figure it out. He was taller than most men and he liked to come right up to people and stand just inches away from them so that they had to look up to meet his dark green eyes.
Which is what he did to Jerry right now.
“You,” he said gruffly, his sharp chin jutting forward. “My office.”
Cookie squeezed Jerry’s hand. That did not sound good.
The chief walked past them without another word. Jerry followed, his face set in stone.
“Wait for me,” he asked quietly. “I don’t think this will take very long.”
A little further down the hallway Ed opened the door marked “Private” and held it open until Jerry was inside the office. The slamming of that door rattled the interview room window in its frame. Inside, Cookie could see Grayson jump, and then slump in his chair again.
She studied the man in there. He looked defeated. Whatever future he saw for himself, it was pretty bad, and he knew it.
“…not my problem!”
The shouting from the chief’s office reached out into the hallway. Apparently, Chief Rosen wasn’t worried about keeping his issues private.
“Your girlfriend out there,” the chief’s voice bellowed, “is set on embarrassing this department and you’re standing there trying to excuse it! I’ve warned you before not to give out information on our cases to civilians!”
Cookie huffed out an indignant breath. She’d helped this department solve several cases in the past. This was a small town, where people helped each other. Rosen would know that if he had taken any time at all to get to know Widow’s Rest. Why that pompous, arrogant blowhard wasn’t fit to call himself a police officer, let alone their town’s police chief!
When one of the uniformed cops of the nightshift came over to guard the door to the interview room he gave Cookie an apologetic smile. “The chief’s not one to mince words.”
“You mean, he’s a fool.”
The officer shifted on his feet, looking very uncomfortable. “Uh, Cookie, maybe you’d like to wait out in the lobby?”
“Why? Are you afraid I’ll say something rude and completely truthful?”
Obviously Cookie wasn’t the only one who felt the way she did, even if the officers here at the department knew better than to voice their opinions. Before the poor man could decide what to say to her, they both heard Chief Rosen bellowing at Jerry again. The words were muffled, but clear.
“I don’t care what the two of you think! The day I want the opinion of you or that half-rate cook out there will be the day I’m removed from office by men in white coats carrying butterfly nets!”
Cookie felt the heat rising in her cheeks and before anyone could stop her she had tramped down the hall and thrown open the door to the chief’s private office.
He was standing around at the backside of his desk, a fist lifted in the air with one finger extended like he’d been just about to make a point when Cookie interrupted him. Jerry was standing in the middle of the room, hands folded behind his back, his face set in a mask.
Chief Rosen stopped, his eyes glaring. “What do you think you’re doing in here? This is my office! Get out!”
“Well,” Cookie said with a sugary sweet smile, “I just thought that if you wanted to run me down you might like to do it in person. So, here I am. Was there something you wanted to say to me?”
She saw the small little twitch of a smile that crossed Jerry’s face. She loved the man for it. Thankfully, his new boss missed it entirely.
Slamming his fist down on his desk, Rosen exploded. “You are the nosiest woman I have ever met in my life! This is a police investigation, not some knitting circle where you get to gossip with your friends about all the little juicy details. You will stay out of our business, do you hear me, Karen Williams? You want to play detective you go do it somewhere else. This does not concern you!”
“Is that so?” She took a few more steps into the office, and watched as Rosen fumed even harder. The man’s cheeks were positively beet red. “In case you missed this part, let me remind you that the victim was a close personal friend of mine. So it does concern me. While your department was off running in circles and unable to find Grayson, I led Jerry right to him. I’m not hindering your investigation in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps instead of shouting at Jerry and saying mean things about me, you could concentrate more on finding who killed my friend, hmm?”
Cookie had never seen a man’s face contort this way. The muscles on his jaw stood out in clear relief. His pulse throbbed in his neck. Ed Rosen was just about as mad as she had ever seen anyone get.
“Officer Stansted,” he said in a barely controlled growl, “you will take your girlfriend out of my office before—”
“Fiancé,” Jerry corrected him. “Cookie is my fiancé.”
“Whatever! You will take her out of my office and out of this building before I have her arrested and you fired! She is not to be involved in this investigation in any way from this point forward, or it will be your job! Do you understand me!”
The air rang with those words. Cookie realized she had overstepped herself quite a bit, but this man just brought that out of her so easily. The only person in town she detested worse than him was Benjamin Roth, local business entrepreneur and thorn in her side, but at least Roth was polite when he insulted Cookie or tried to convince her to sell her bakery.
Rosen was just plain mean-spirited. He’d been that way since he started working here and she didn’t see any signs of that changing. She never would understand what he had against her. Jealousy, she supposed. Jealousy of anyone smarter than himself.
That must be a very long list.
Jerry’s hand held her gently by the elbow and steered her back through the open door of the office. “Time to go,” he told her in a whisper. “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”
“When did we ever have a welcome?” she whispered back.
They took the back way out, as there were less faces to see that way, but the ones she did see wore a mix of subtle admiration for what she had just done and fear that getting too close to her—or to Jerry either—would paint them with the same brush that the chief had just painted Cookie and Jerry with. An entire department, afraid of the man who was supposed to be leading them. Cookie shook her head as they went out through the back door into the night air. How could a small-town police department expect to be run this way?
Outside, Jerry hugged her. “I have to go back in. There’s reports to write up and forms to fill out. Do you want to wait for me?”
“It’s not that far,” she told him. “I can walk. Will you be all right in there?”
To her surprise, he shrugged. “You know, I don’t really know if I care anymore. I love being a police officer. I’ve loved serving this town and helping out the people who live here, but I think there just comes a time in any career where you start to feel like enough is enough. I could work with Rick Santimaw, but Ed Rosen? Working for that man… it’s more of a chore than a job. More of a…” He grasped for the word he wanted to describe it.
“More like sucking on a lemon,” Cookie offered.
Jerry blinked at her. “Huh?”
“I mean, Rosen is like eating a raw lemon, whereas Santimaw was like drinking lemonade. Both are a bit tart, but you can at least enjoy the lemonade.”
His smile smoothed out the creases in his forehead. “Yes. Just like that. Leave it to you to make sense of things with a cooking metaphor.”